Legacy Solutions: 2 Reasons Why Every Family Must Have These Timely Conversations, for Now and for Later

By: Jon Hull, Author / Life & Legacy Documentation Expert / Speaker

In our last post that outlined the big picture, we talked about the need for timely family conversations as a critical part of having your affairs in order throughout life and not waiting until later.

The top two reasons for these talks;

1) They offer the wisdom and actions needed for the particular timely conversation

2) They garner trust for future conversations later in life

As many people find out every day, having a conversation with an aging parent about items such as driving, medical needs, living arrangements, financial protection and other aging items can be frustrating and delicate when the family does not have a history of timely family communications about such things.

The parent may be demonstrating diminished capacity which prompts the need to talk, but the parent can be very distrustful due to fear of loss and freedom. You can imagine that if you were talking about financial protection, i.e. Will, Trust and more when you have never talked with that parent about money before, the parent can easily view this as greed and you trying to take control of their life. If that same aging parent had started timely communications of such things with their adult children early on in life they most likely would have their affairs in order and had talks about what their life looked like to them as they aged. The result would be openness to the timely conversation their adult children are now bringing up and the adult children could gently remind them of earlier conversations about what they are talking about should the need arise.

We have a friend whose business and personal mantra is, “Words are currency”. This statement couldn’t be truer when having these timely conversations with our family. By being open and truthful when teaching our adult children about legally protecting family and finances at timely points along their life’s path, we as parents invite later conversations when our children are concerned about our well-being. So to, our children know that they can talk with us about anything at any time without having to tip toe around life subject matter for fear of reprisal. Those earlier timely words of advice are currency in the family bank!

In the following weeks we will be writing about those timely moments and the actions needed to be the teachers of the generations to follow us. Many of you may already be doing this, but many have never learned these lessons and that’s why we are having these conversations here.

Next week; A timely conversation between parents and newlyweds.

We want to hear from you! Please leave comments or tells us a story of having or not having timely conversations with your family in the comments section below. Your words might help others to understand their situation better. If you have not read our book, A Legacy Undone, you can pick up a copy here.